It was a gloriously beautiful Monday morning in sun drenched Miami, as usual, and Lara DunCroft walk the beach before her shift, staying close to the shoreline, indulging in the hi-temperatures and abundant sunshine that never occurred back home in England.
Waves moved gently across the ocean, coming to the shoreline with a soft rhythmic-swoosh, and a light breeze blew.
As calm as the setting was, Lara still took in everything around her. Unconsciously and instinctively clocking the faces of nearby sunbathing beauties, and that of the muscular man who jogged past her.
Something shiny in the sand caught her eye, she stooped down to investigate, it was only litter.
Suddenly a light sprinkle of flakes began to fall around her. Lara removed her sunglasses and then held out her hand, catching a couple of the flakes on her palm. She looked at the flakes curiously...snow in Miami?
She slowly stood back up, then she saw it. Smoke in the distance from a nearby house.
Lara ran to the expensive property and looked in the windows, a man lay motionless on the living room floor, smoke was seeping in from the adjoining kitchen and garage that was ablaze.
Lara called it in as she ran to the front door, which was unlocked.
“MDPD.” She said as she entered the house with her weapon drawn.
The man in the living room was face down in a pool of red, Lara felt his neck, he was gone, a gunshot below the rib cage.
Lara checked the house upstairs and down, it was empty so she ran back to the crime scene.
Smoke was rapidly bleeding into the room. Lara knew that she did not have much time. Using a stick of gum for scale, she quickly pulled out her phone and took photos of the scene: The body, the blood, a knocked over houseplant and the partial shoeprint in its spilled dirt, as well as a teak cabinet that looked like it had been riffled through.
Flames where quickly spreading across the hardwood floor, towards the body and the evidence!
Lara grabbed some nearby tape and envelopes, she lifted some prints from the cabinet, a couple of purple fibbers from the man’s expensive blue shirt and time was up.
Lara hurried to move the man onto a rug as the flames grew dangerously close, and she quickly dragged him out of the front door.
Lara stopped as soon as she and the body hit grass. She turned and looked up at the house; flames now rose up the side of the building wildly, smoke pumped from some of the up and downstairs windows like chimneys and a dense cloud of suffocating smoke billowed out of the front door, that had only narrowly missed engulfing her before her exit.
Her beautiful, expressive eyes widened ever so slightly, it was an unsettling site, an unsettling experience.
She looked at the body then back at the house and waited for back up to arrive... hoping that she had done the right thing.